Oolite.org updated media?

[cim]

could perhaps be contained in an invisible IFRAME to preserve the URL.

That's probably not a good option, given how useful it is to be able to easily find the URL of Wiki pages for linking to them both in-wiki and on the forum.

[maik]

The wiki in its current location can be accessed cleanly from the site via a redirect script from a subfolder (i.e. oolite.org/wiki) and could perhaps be contained in an invisible IFRAME to preserve the URL. Alternatively the wiki could (with maik's help) be transferred to the oolite.org site but retain the links to the database. Alternatively again, ownership of the oolite.org address could be transferred to maik to host both site and wiki in one place. Or whatever else anyone can think of.

I just took my domain name because it is one I have control over. Ideally, the wiki is reachable under wiki.oolite.org. That would require definition of sub domains on oolite.org, then wiki.oolite.org can be associated with my IP address and my domain name can go out of the way (which I would prefer).

[maik]

MediaWiki is up and running on http://maikschulz.de/mediawiki/

Give it some hits, I need to know how it holds up. Note that there is no Oolite related content there yet, only the bare MediaWiki installation.

Been playing with URL rewriting, the wiki is now at http://maikschulz.de/wiki/. The /wiki/ part corresponds to the index.php part in the current Elite Wiki but is in line with wikipedia.org

[maik]

I feel the potential new wiki server is reasonably secure now. Who would volunteer to take care of the installation in my stead in case something needs to be done and I take a hiatus?

Requirements would be familiarity with Linux (preferably Debian 6) administration via a shell, with Apache2, MySQL5, and MediaWiki administration, and strong security consciousness.

PM me if you are willing. Would it be too much to ask for a scanned copy of your national ID as well?

[Selezen]

Would it be too much to ask for a scanned copy of your national ID as well?

Yes. Next you'll want inside leg measurements and sexual orientation*.



* mine is "upside down"

[maik]

Would it be too much to ask for a scanned copy of your national ID as well?

Yes. Next you'll want inside leg measurements and sexual orientation*.

Actually, just something authoritative that tells me who someone who would like to admin my public server is, would be prudent to ask for. After all, I'm responsible for what it is used for in the end. A video chat (Skype or FaceTime) where such document is shown would also be sufficient, if someone feels uneasy about mailing a scanned copy.

[SandJ]

Would it be too much to ask for a scanned copy of your national ID as well?

Can I have an account please? My name is Aishwarya Rai. Passport.

My neighbour, Frank Moss, has offered to help, too. Passport.

I met John Okonkwo on holiday, he wants to help. Passport. He knows all about computer security. Steve Thompson does too. Passport.

David Blunkett can be trusted unless it is to do with designing graphics. ID card.

Here's my other neighbour. id card. Can he have an account, too?

And Adil Aslam. id card.

[maik]

Not a perfect verification scheme, I agree. Video chat would be better, but it raises the bar quite a bit. An email that is signed with a key issued by a trusted party would work as well. It just hasn't caught on much, at least with the people I know... I just do not like the idea of giving the keys to the better part of my server to someone who is known to me only by his/her oolite BB nick

Am open for suggestions though.

Edit to add: web of trust would work. If someone who went to the Christmas Meetup would volunteer, at least some of us know their real names and can more or less vouch for them...

[Selezen]

Do you not have the ability to provide SSH access to only certain folders in your server?

My ISP allows me to create FTP accounts locked to certain folders on the server. I thought that was the norm these days, even on linux-based servers.

<thinks>

I keep offering this sort of stuff, and I don't want anyone to think it's some kind of power trip, but I'm happy to provide server space for any sorts of internet hi-jinks. If the security issues are too much then I'm able to set up a hughesd.co.uk/oolite subfolder on my server with FTP access ONLY to that folder and its subfolders. It will be Windows based but will have all the PHP functionality it needs to run MediaWiki - all that would be needed would be the connection to the database (although I have one of those too).

That said, if Winston is not prepared to provide a backup of the database to install, and we're starting from scratch anyway, I could install pmWiki and we could migrate the content there instead. The wikicode is practically identical but there may be some issues with templating (infoboxes and the like) that some PHP wizard may have to look into.

The benefit of pmWiki is that it's flat file based and easier to maintain just using a file editor and an FTP client rather than having to muck about with phpMyAdmin or MySQL Administrator. MediaWiki is a heavy client too, and can be quite slow, whilst pmWiki is more tailored to smaller wikis (although, as TV Tropes proves, it can handle big wikis quite well...)

I'd even be happy to open a new Linux hosting account to host oolite.org so that the current structure of the site and its name and the wiki's features could be flawlessly maintained.

As I said, it's just a thought. Personally, I'd trust any of the long-time contributors to have access to my webspace...

I don't often contribute much other than ideas to Oolite, but to be honest I'd happily pay web hosting fees and maintain the web sites (it's not a lot of work to do even when something goes wrong, to be honest) to give something back to a community that has given me a lot over the last few years.

EDIT: I noted the conversation about box.net - my web hosting has unlimited bandwidth too, so in theory we could consolidate that too rather than relying on file hosting sites.

I don't mind giving the Oolite admins the login / account / financial details for any web hosting that I set up or donate to Oolite to ensure continuity.

[maik]

Do you not have the ability to provide SSH access to only certain folders in your server?

Sure do. But the point is that I am allowing others (don't take it personally anyone please) to use the server to do anything on the Internet they want by allowing access to the apache+PHP+MySQL configuration (which is a must in my opinion if I want this server to be useful even if am not reachable). So I take full responsibility for whatever those others do. I can do this either without even knowing them, or I can at least ask for some sort of identification so I know who I am dealing with.

If you are happy to provide this service to anonymous users then please go ahead.

I could install pmWiki and we could migrate the content there instead.

I haven't researched pmWiki yet, but just in case it does not offer import of MediaWiki exports then don't even bother because otherwise you would not only be importing media files one by one but also wiki pages.

[Selezen]

I haven't researched pmWiki yet, but just in case it does not offer import of MediaWiki exports then don't even bother because otherwise you would not only be importing media files one by one but also wiki pages.

http://hughesd.co.uk/oolitedev/wiki/pmw ... ite.Oolite

Your wish is my command...

Total time taken (whilst at work and waiting for VB project to build): 45 mins. Some cleanup required (especially links to non-Oolite category stuff) and media to be imported.

EDIT: This represents the content of the OOLITE category - ship lists, OXPs and so on are in separate categories. Hm. I will export ALL files and see what happens.

As regards security issues, I trust the Oolite Administration team to be able to assign trustworthy forum goers access rights. Remember that anyone here who currently has rights to administer the forum, website or Wiki have been borne out to be trustworthy, long-time members of the forum. In addition I would be happy to release my hosting control panel login details to Giles or Ahruman so that they could set up individual FTP accounts for each trusted bod (in case they abused the access).

[maik]

It would be interesting to know what happens with templates. Also, converting the MediaWiki markup to pmWiki (e.g. for headings) needs to be done. Can the edit history be migrated?

I just tried to see the OXP List but got the following error after waiting for half a minute:

Code: Select all

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in E:\domains\h\hughesd.co.uk\user\htdocs\oolitedev\wiki\pmwiki.php on line 1006

[Selezen]

The OXP list is a huge file and it does take some time to render. I can get it to show, but it is definitely slow. I think it's because the pmWiki renderer is getting caught up on some of the MediaWiki formatting and has to render the code as text too, thus making the page even longer.

Conversion of the MediaWiki markup will have to be a manual process. It could be done via a text editor . I have installed a barebones converter to the wiki but it's not very good. To convert, view the page, then edit the page then preview then save. It doesn't handle the table layouts but it does fix the headings and some of the simpler formatting problems.

It's possible that the majority of problems can be fixed by editing the exported XML file and find/replacing the formatting codes.

Edit history can't be migrated.

Templates can't (as far as my research has gone) be migrated. I've been looking at ways to keep the infoboxes but the pmWiki equivalent isn't very well documented.

I suppose the fact is that no matter what happens, there's going to be a lot of work involved if Winston can't/won't do a backup of the wiki database. All I'm trying to discuss (and demonstrate) at the moment are options to make the process easier and make maintenance easier. I think pmWiki is a good option (despite the work involved at startup) because it doesn't rely on a separate database server.

[maik]

I wouldn't mind an option to MediaWiki that makes maintenance easier, thank you for proposing and researching an alternative!

In our case we have >2000 content pages (>5000 pages if you take redirects, user talk pages etc. into account). Given that templates cannot be migrated, history is lost, and markup will need to be converted partially by search-replace (which still needs manual quality assurance), and partially manually, the effort needed to migrate those sounds prohibitively high to me.

If you start a wiki from scratch, pmWiki sounds like an option worth considering for the reasons you outlined.

Looking at this thread I don't hear from anyone though who would be interested in taking a copy of the keys to a new server though... are we wasting our time?

[Smivs]

Looking at this thread I don't hear from anyone though who would be interested in taking a copy of the keys to a new server though... are we wasting our time?

I don't think so, and your efforts are appreciated. Unfortunately I can't offer to help as I have no knowedge or experience with server admin, and in truth am usually busy with other things (like the almost weekly OXP release cycle I seem to have got in to )
However, I would be happy to help-out on things like proof-reading/quality control from time to time if that will be of any use.
Cheers,
Smivs.